Who Wants Cum?

[FantasyXY]

I recently received an irate comment to one of my stories insisting I am a grade school aged idiot because I used the words "come" and "coming" instead of "cum" and "cumming". Cumming? Is that even a word?

• Technically the word "cum" means something like "and also", or "at the same time" - Yeah, I looked it up.
• Cumming is only used as slang and it means what you think it means. Having an orgasm.
• And Cummings?... Well, that's a common surname.

Of course I know all the slang uses for the words cum and cumming, but to me their constant use in a story paints a picture of what Cletus the hick from the Simpsons cartoons says while jerking off on a chicken. To me it's not very erotic.

I much prefer to only use the term "cum" in a story when I am referring to a man's reproductive fluid (after all it is semen and also sperm). When the verb is needed I use come, coming or came.

This commenter to my story was truly pissed about my use of words, and said that it absolutely ruined the story for him. Maybe this guy couldn't come unless he read the word cum! Who knows?

So when you read/write a story, what do you want to see? Cum or Come? Coming or Cumming? Came or... forget it, no one says "cummed" do they?

 

[sr71plt]

Ongoing discussion on an evolving rendering. I use "come" as the verb and "cum" as the noun. I trust that eventually "cum" will become the verb for this specific meaning--to differentiate it--but we don't seem to be there yet. "Cum" as noun and "come" as verb seems prevalent at the moment (and even is specified by some erotica publisher Web sites). But that won't stop contrary argumentation.

I'd just delete that comment on your story. They aren't spouting anything remotely authoritative on the issue.

 

[R. Richard]

Two of my publishers insist upon 'come (coming, came)' as a verb and 'cum' as a noun. Thus I use the convention in all my writing.

 

[RejectReality]

This is a serial commenter who has been around for years -- ignore him.

Your usuage is perfectly legitimate, and in line with the closest thing there is to a consensus on the subject. That's not only here, but every single erotica site where I've seen the question pop up.

About half the time, someone comes along in a later comment and points out to this numbskull that "come" has been used for both orgasm and ejaculate for ages, where "cum" has only been around since the 70s.

 

[shutterpsb]

I read that comment and thought WTF. I agree with the others, come, came, coming = verb and cum = noun. I don't use the noun much in my stories.

 

[CharleyH]

Agree with you, cumpletely.

Write as you will, and forget the rest.

 

[MatthewVett]

I use "cumming." I don't care a lot either way, but it seems odd to me to use one spelling for the noun and another for the verb.

 

[sr71plt]

I use "cumming." I don't care a lot either way, but it seems odd to me to use one spelling for the noun and another for the verb.

As I posted, it's an evolving term. I expect it will go there as standard fare eventually. The burgeoning erotica market will increase the attention to the issue, and regardless of what folks individually prefer, the differentiating need factor will eventually win out.

 

[oggbashan]

I try to avoid both because they feel wrong.

But I think cum and cumming will win.

 

[RoyceConnors]

I sat in on a blog hotseat with an author and the topic was about using come or cum. Whether cum is an actual word now, wasn't the point, but rather how each word affected the reader when seeing it used in the context of sexual ejaculation. Cum was preferred almost unanimously by everyone, making cum the word that will be added to our language of writing.

The example used by someone was this, to decide which read better.

'Come on Baby, I want you to come.'

or

"Come on Baby, I want you to cum.'

The latter was more to the point of knowing what was being meant by the statement.

 

[RejectReality]

That's a biased example -- easily avoided. Using the same word ( even with two different spellings ) in such close proximity is something that should be avoided anyway. It's salting the experiment to obtain the results you want.

Even if it does change, it's not going to change any time soon. No matter where you go, the same consensus rises to the top. The current crop of erotica writers prefers things the way they are. Every time this question comes up, new writers see the people they consider to be role models and success stories leaning overwhelmingly this direction, and they're naturally going to follow that lead.

It's going to take a long time to erode that.

 

[sr71plt]

Naw, I think Royce's example points to where we're headed quite well. And, as more and more publishers go with the come/cum differentiation, it will become standard no matter how much "I'll do what I like" writers at free-use sites decide to go their own way. Like most words, the standards won't care what "seems right/is preferable" to individual writers/readers.

 

[RejectReality]

Naw, I think Royce's example points to where we're headed quite well. And, as more and more publishers go with the come/cum differentiation, it will become standard no matter how much "I'll do what I like" writers at free-use sites decide to go their own way. Like most words, the standards won't care what "seems right/is preferable" to individual writers/readers.

The publishers' standards overwhelmingly lean the same way.

I see nothing to indicate readers prefer the other way either. For every comment ( The majority of which I'm reasonably positive are coming from the same person ) complaining about the current standards, there are far more condemning that opinion or degrading stories using "cum" for being juvenile.

If anything, the scales seemed tipped the opposite way. What reason does the publishing industry have to make a change that few are asking for?

 

[sr71plt]

I'm always amused when I see writers think they, individually, have a veto vote on such things. It can work at Literotica, of course, because this is an amateur sort of "whatever" site. It has no meaning in the actual world of publishing, though.

To the extent that publishers are making a choice on this at all, it's toward differentiating cum/come. I think that's been posted enough here for it to have been absorbed by anyone not being hardheaded about it.

 

[RejectReality]

Every publisher people mention that has a standard on this is using the same standard that's advocated here, at Lush, at SOL, so on and so forth: Come as the verb and cum as the noun.

If that's changed, feel free to correct me, but nobody's mentioning it if it has.

What reason do they have to shift?

 

[sr71plt]

Every publisher people mention that has a standard on this is using the same standard that's advocated here, at Lush, at SOL, so on and so forth: Come as the verb and cum as the noun.

If that's changed, feel free to correct me, but nobody's mentioning it if it has.

What reason do they have to shift?

Must have crossed wires, because that's exactly what I've been posting as where the evolving publishing standard exists at this moment.

It's going to continue to evolve, though. It probably isn't going to stay there.

 

[RejectReality]

From what I remember, that represents a shift in the opposite direction, though.

Way back when, "cum" was the standard in erotica for both. Unless my memory is way off base, digging up ancient stories from the genesis of Lit would probably demonstrate that. Erotica has been slowly shifting away from that, to arrive where we are.

 

[sr71plt]

Not that I'm aware. But I've only been writing erotica for eight and a half years.

 

[robertreams]

Cum or come is correct, whichever you use. The only thing I ever insist on is consistency. If you use cum once in a story, use it throughout. I personally use cum, cummed, cuming, to avoid confusion in situations such as "Come here", vs, "cum here". In pornography there can be a significant difference between, "I am coming" and "I am cumming"; "I came" and "I cummed". The rule seems to be:whatever floats your boat. I think I have only ever seen one time in which it was actually confusing what the writer meant, usually the context will carry the idea, but not 100%

 

[RobynBanks]

Not that I'm aware. But I've only been writing erotica for eight and a half years.

My father-in-law has been driving for fifty years and he's still crap. If you write for another eight years, who knows, you might improve.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

CUM etymology dictionary.

verb and noun, by 1973, apparently a variant of the sexual sense of come that originated in pornographic writing, perhaps first in the noun sense.

This "experience sexual orgasm" slang meaning of come (perhaps originally come off) is attested from 1650, in "Walking In A Meadowe Greene," in a folio of "loose songs" collected by Bishop Percy.

"They lay soe close together, they made me much to wonder;
I knew not which was wether, until I saw her under.
Then off he came, and blusht for shame soe soon that he had endit;
Yet still she lies, and to him cryes, "one more and none can mend it."

As a noun meaning "semen or other product of orgasm" it is on record from the 1920s. The sexual cum seems to have no connection with Latin cum, the preposition meaning "with, together with," which is occasionally used in English in local names of combined parishes or benifices (such as Chorlton-cum-Hardy), in popular Latin phrases (such as cum laude), or as a combining word to indicate a dual nature or function (such as slumber party-cum-bloodbath).

 

[sr71plt]

My father-in-law has been driving for fifty years and he's still crap. If you write for another eight years, who knows, you might improve.

You seem a little upset, Robyn. And more than a little childish. You, of course, haven't read anything I've written. You're just being juvenile. (And to compound your childishness, you probably are off zap voting my stories that you haven't read.)

 

[sr71plt]

Oh, and, that was interesting information, Elfin. Thanks.

 

[redzinger]

I supposed it depends on the writer and the intended audience.

I've never used 'cum' in any form, and never will. It's one word I really dislike; personally, it ruins the flow of any story I'm reading.

But this could be a British thing.

 

[sr71plt]

Whereas each time I encounter it being spelled as "come" I conflate it with the traditional definition, give a little frown, and am thrown out of the story. I don't really care how it's differentiated--I just need the words to be separated. For now, "cum" does that. (And I'd never be so stubborn to to say I won't follow a new standardization ever. I'll do whatever helps the reader keep following what I'm writing. I don't consider writing to be all about me.)